She was still warming up to the notion that her guest was not only Malcolm but Sir Malcolm when the first of the brothers arrived and loudly boomed, “Michael!” Before the confusion could be cleared up another brother arrived and again it was “Michael!” That name echoed faintly in her mind until the woman standing with the black-haired brother called the redheaded brother Francis—and she thought of the list from the psychic and it was all coming true. Francis. Michael. Two of the names the real Eudoxia had spoken in her trance. With a shock, she thought of Michael’s headlong rush from the elevated train to the building where the Foundation was housed—the tower, another item on the list, and the very spot where she had looked west and dreamed of California. And now she found herself in this hotel, and what had she called it when Michael sketched it? A castle. The Tower and the Castle, her shorthand with Josef.
It could all be a coincidence—of course it could—but already an icy chill tingled her scalp, and the hairs on her arm stood straight even in this turgid evening heat. She couldn’t say a word about it to this roomful of strangers. It would only make her appear to be the crazy woman who had taken such good care of Malcolm—no, Michael. But she knew that if the other brother or the man by the window, who had entered with the redhead, turned out to be George, then she would faint, or shriek. If Eudoxia had been right about these names pulled from the ether, then was that proof that she was also right about the only question that Lilly had actually asked and which had been answered so definitively with a string of nos?
Just as Michael’s brothers turned their attention to Lilly, the concierge bustled into the suite with two bottles of champagne icing in chrome-plated buckets and enough glasses for the ever-growing party. Collier wrapped a cloth napkin around the neck of the first bottle and decorously uncorked it—a faint pop—and when he unwrapped the linen, a syrupy white fog flowed from the bottle’s mouth. He was just as deft with introductions, presenting the Countess Eudoxia Rothschild to Sir Angus MacFarquhar with all due ceremony.
“And this is Fitzwilliam,” Sir Angus said, making way for his brother.
“Oh,” Lilly said. “I was expecting George.”
“He arrives tomorrow,” Martin said. “Angus here can tell you all about it.”
Collier filled the remaining glasses and again took his leave. It wouldn’t be proper to linger while the guests toasted their good fortune.
As the door soundlessly closed, Rosemary stepped forward. She had not been introduced, and God knows what name Francis might have stuck her with. “Eudoxia,” she said. “What a lovely name.”
“Please, it’s Lilly. I only told him that so I wouldn’t be the only commoner in the room. A joke of sorts. I apologize if that offends you.”
Rosemary laughed. “There’s not a drop of royal blood anywhere in this room. We’re all putting on airs tonight.”
“Before we have any more confessions,” Martin said, “let’s drink this bubbly before it loses its fizz.” Around the room, glasses were raised and Martin prepared to offer a few words.
“Hold on, Your Lordship,” Francis said. “Won’t you join us, Mr. Cronin?”
The others—giddy, rosy-faced, happy as lottery winners—turned to the man at the window.
“No, thanks.” His voice came out fully Corkonian: No, tanks. Thanks being one of those words he hadn’t used often enough in America, and so it was stored in his voice box just the way he’d grown up using it. “I think I’ll stretch my legs.”
It was only a few steps from the window to the door, but it felt like miles. Bad enough to have all of the Dempsey brothers together, but there was the oldest one’s wife, too. The one he’d seen on the sidewalk in the Bronx with her two little lambs, the baby in her arms and the little girl yammering away about who knows what, just like his Henry. Whether or not Francis was able to carry off the plan, what would this woman lose? Her brother-in-law an assassin, or would-be assassin, reviled in the papers, and herself and the husband implicated in the plot: Hadn’t they hosted the brother just a week before? Or else her husband dead or disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Or would Gavigan carry through on the promise to burn down the whole family?
Yesterday at the garage, as the plan had festered and bloomed, Cronin had asked that Jamie, “Would he really do it? The missus of the older one, too?”
Jamie had fixed him with that cold eye, dead black from the pupil through the iris. He had sneered—apparently Cronin did have a short memory—before he spoke. “It wouldn’t be the first time a wife got rubbed, now, would it?”
Cronin paused at the door and fixed Francis with a look. “I’ll see you in the morning,” he said. “Before.” He let that word hang there, a reminder of what Francis had to do, and for whose benefit—not for Gavigan, but for the people in this room.
Cronin skipped the elevator now and took the stairs, his feet stutter-stepping all the way down. He emerged in a corridor that led him to the lobby, brightly lit and full of people enjoying a summer night. He would let the Dempseys have their fun, a last night to look back on, but he wanted no part of it: the fancy dress and the laughter of carefree people and the black cars shimmering by the curb. He pushed his way through the doors before the men in braided caps and coats could do the job for him and then he was crossing the street, looking neither right nor left but holding his hand extended, palm out, a stop sign any cabbie would be a fool to ignore. His feet propelled him into the park and it wasn’t until he was beneath the trees and away from the path, his feet chuffing over the grass, that he let himself breathe.
Seven stories above his head, the Dempseys were raising their glasses in celebration, together and happy because they had cheated fate by snatching Michael from the maw of death. The boy had been saved before, by not being in his mother’s arms that morning when she started the car and the wires sparked and flesh and machine were both torn apart. And if Francis was to be believed, then it had happened a second time, when the blast at the farmhouse knocked the senses out of him but did not take his life. And now he had been lost in the ravenous city and had emerged none the worse for it. You could think he was the most star-crossed of the bunch. Unlucky, that one. But you could also say he was charmed: death had tried and tried again to get its bony hands on Michael, and he had managed to give it the slip every time. Now he would have one more test of his good fortune—for his family to be pitted against Gavigan and the bastard’s mad plan to set fire to the world. As for Cronin, he would have one more night in the room with the half-painted chair.
“WHO WAS THAT?” Rosemary said.
“Ah, he’s no one,” Francis said, raising his glass to start another round of toasts to Michael’s health. “A mate of his helped me out in Mountjoy, and I promised I’d return the favor. But that’s all been sorted.”
Now that Michael was safe, Martin was eager to get the full story of his disappearance from Francis—the stakes were lower, the question of culpability no longer a life-or-death matter—but not tonight. He didn’t want to be the one to cast a shadow over the celebration. He thought of Sunday at the apartment, how happy they had all been, and how quickly it had unraveled. Now they were being given a second chance, and just like on Sunday they toasted their good fortune with champagne. Twice in a week, and this time at the Plaza? Things were definitely looking up. Tonight they would live like Rockefellers. Tomorrow, at Peggy’s reception, he would play for John Hammond, and the world would see how high Martin could rise. He would get to the bottom of this business with Francis and his shady acquaintances another day.